I spent yesterday morning preparing the agenda for our council meeting.

The administrative tasks are usually done by a Clerk, but he resigned and we have only just appointed a new one. I have been acting clerk and chair for three months.

Last night I walked around the village and posted the agendas on the boards, including the board where some creature eats the paper.  I think it’s a snail. It could be an insect. I have put the paperwork in clear polypropylene folders.

(Every document to be considered has to be posted to the website and on village notice boards at least three clear days ahead of the meeting).

The firm which uses the old station yard is still causing a big problem.

The couple living in the house on the edge of the cutting overlooking the yard are distraught.  She says she has to take tranquillisers. The noise is tormenting them.

We persuaded the environmental authority to monitor noise from the house and the agency eventually issued a noise abatement order. They negotiated some measures to muffle the noise, and retired one mobile crane. The authority is not willing to take the matter further.

Last week the company honoured an undertaking to move the old red phone box, raising it from its base and transporting it to their works where they will refit it. At a public meeting last month, people said they wanted to keep the old phone box even though it is no longer in use. 

Next Wednesday will be the first meeting for the new clerk. She seems a decent person.  I hope we get on, and it is not too burdensome.

Rick and Loretta say that the noise from the site is making it impossible to sell their house. House prices are rising again after the big drop in 2010 but their house is stuck at the old value.

I tried to persuade the company to pay the family something to offset the loss but they won’t do that, fearing claims from other nearby homes.

I am working at the ragged edges of lives that do not intersect.

I will have disappointed more people than I have pleased when my term ends. 

Last week I saw a video of a previous meeting. I recorded it to help me with the minuting  when I was acting clerk. I think of myself as a “modern” chair with my trainers and fleeces and baseball cap. But no, under the eye of the camera, this is just an old guy who needs reading glasses pottering through a long agenda of minor items.